Soon after Sean Healey learned he had been stricken with ALS, he decided to fight back in the best way he knew how: by investing in the search for a solution.

The fruits of that decision became public on Wednesday, when Massachusetts General Hospital said it will launch the Sean M. Healey and AMG Center for ALS, funded by $40 million-plus in donations. The Healey Center will help coordinate research efforts into finding better ways to treat — and eventually cure — the fatal neurodegenerative disease.

WORCESTER – Researchers at UMass Medical School on Wednesday announced a potential new breakthrough in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The proposed gene therapy technique, which involves using synthetic microRNAs to switch off the proteins linked to the degenerative neurological disease, has so far proven effective in animal experiments, and is headed to clinical trials on patients.

The treatment would only be for the roughly 10 percent of ALS patients who have the familial version of the disease, however, according to Christian Mueller, a faculty member at UMass who worked… more

Pharnext – This biopharmaceutical company has an interesting approach to find a cure for rare conditions that do not currently have a cure or treatment.

Pharnext is an advanced clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company founded in April 2007 by renowned scientists and entrepreneurs including Professor Daniel Cohen and collaborators, pioneers in modern genomics. The company develops new therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases – orphan and common – where there are currently no cures and existing therapies available.